Date : Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:10:24 +0100
From : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: Mailing list
Alex Taylor wrote:
> I've often wondered why this group isn't carried over Usenet rather
> than email,
With email you at least need to subscribe. That lets out the unwanted
spam. It also provides some measure against email address harvesting
[*], though this may be moot if the list archives provide unmunged
addresses.
The only newsgroup I subscribe to now is the moderated comp.risks. I
used to take comp.sysadmin.recovery, until I decided it wasn't worth the
time taken to read it - too out of my sphere of giving a damn. When I
got Thunderbird all set up, I took comp.sys.acorn.misc for about a day.
The only group I miss is argonet.zfc, which was a group local to the ISP
so I'd not be able to access it now... still, how many of the ZFC
regulars are still there eight and a half years later? It's the people
that make the group, not the group itself...
> which would possibly solve all the problems described here.
But it would no doubt create a dozen new problems.
> as many groups I've used in the past seem to be suffering low traffic
> as people turn to PHP-based web forums instead.
Really? I always found forums to be clumsy second-rate Usenet wannabes,
like the best solution for keeping it "local".
One of the really annoying thing about forums is that you need to visit
a dozen sites, log in, look at the messages... how can this be better
than firing up the news client, having it collect the messages (ALL of
them) to attribute flags for "not read" and "new"?
Oh, wait, stupid me. Usenet has totally resisted markup in messages.
Forums, on the other hand, have totally embraced it, along with animated
avatars and huge GIF signatures and all sorts of visual crap that can
only appeal to the mindless zombies of the forum realm. Sorry, that's
not me. In fact the ONLY place I accept HTML markup in emails is Amazon
(the order confirmations print better that way). Otherwise, plain text
is all I want, and it's all I'll send. You can see the same philosophy
on my website. Lots of words, some pictures, practically NO eye-candy.
Er, maybe actually NO eye-candy. :-)
> I wonder how it might impact upon those members who use a real BBC to
> read the list (I'm thinking JGH here).
I think JGH reads this list "by proxy" (Arcade BBS?), so all it might
require is for somebody to cobble together something to translate usenet
postings into something JGH could cope with. I hope he reads via QWK or
the like, not doing all of this online via dialup! Ouch!
> An Ethernet-equipped Beeb with appropriate software (which I don't think
> has been written yet) might do the job
Storage would worry me, and how would the 2MHz CPU be at indexing and
threading? How about with a weeks worth of postings? In any case, /way/
to trash a floppy! :-)
> I might be rambling now because I've been drinking quite heavily this
> evening.
Oh dear...
Best wishes,
Rick.
--
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...
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